The news that Benedict XVI defrocked so many priests is both good and terrible

Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests for the abuse of minors in the last 2 years (CNS)

We must pray for every victim of abuse

Vatican Insider reported last week that during the pontificate of Pope Benedict, he defrocked 260 priests in 2011 and another 124 in 2012 (i.e. 384 priests in a two-year period) for the sexual abuse of minors.

This is good news and terrible news at the same time. It is good news in that it lays to rest all the slurs against the Pope Emeritus, that he was more concerned with sacred liturgy or wearing elaborate papal vestments than he was about dealing with this enormous scandal and wound in the Church. It is also appalling news when you consider that each case of priestly abuse is not simply a criminal offence in secular as well as canon law, but that it is also a tragedy for the victim and the perpetrator. Whenever I hear of particular cases of abuse, I pray for all concerned, including the shamed priest and his family. What sorrow and shame this son or brother has brought on their shoulders. I recall the words of strong-minded Margaret Bosco to her son, later to become St John Bosco, when he first put on his priestly cassock: that she would rather he never became a priest than degrade this sacred office.

People outside the Church who want to attack her do not have to look far for ammunition when they read of these cases. Pointing out the statistics to them, and arguing that the number of priest-abusers is a tiny proportion of the priesthood worldwide, might be true – but I lack the heart to engage in it. They don’t see the Mystical Body of Christ and are rightly scandalised by its fallen human face. Perhaps there should be a ritual of public penance by Catholics for the failings of the Church and our own failings within it?

Still, these gloomy thoughts were brought to an end by reading a wonderful story of one young priest, reported by Aleteia, with the title “A Priest writes to the Pope just before dying at age 31…” Don Fabrizio De Michino of Naples died last year of a rare tumour that grew just inside his heart and then metastasized to his liver and spleen. Shortly before his death he wrote to Pope Francis, telling him that he was praying for him “so that you will always have the strength and joy to proclaim the beautiful news of the Gospel.”

Don Fabrizio described the poverty and crime of his parish, Ponticelli, but added that “every day I truly discover the beauty of the Lord’s goodness on those who trust in him and the Blessed Virgin.” Referring to the “difficult years” of fighting his disease, he emphasised that “I have never lost he joy of being a preacher of the Gospel”, adding that “even in my fatigue, I perceive a strength that does not come from me but from God…” He concluded his letter writing that “I do not ask God for my healing, but rather the strength and joy to remain a true witness to his love and a priest in the model of his own heart.”

It’s good to be reminded that there are many priests like Don Fabrizio, who live to proclaim the “beautiful news” of the Gospel, who trust in God despite their daily adversities and who are true witnesses to the love of Christ in their priestly vocation. Let’s keep them in our prayers.

In some ways times have changed. But rape has been rape and has been a crime for a very long time. So has child sex abuse.

Dave

I would not care to speculate on whether Sipe was lying, but I do not at all consider it very plausible that any such secret vows would stay secret very long given how gossipy cardinals tend to be. But more to the point, since there never was an installation of 31 cardinals orchestrated by Magee, the story, whether his or yours, could not possibly be true.

Jonathan West

In that case I hope that the Catholic church will take your maxims to heart and refrain from any public moralising until it has the best possible procedures for reporting abusers and preventing abuse.

Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen though.

Atilla The Possum

My word, Jonathan! You are so condescending and patronising it’s obscene.
Those maxims were not directed at the Catholic Church. Members of the Catholic Church (like myself, not you I take it) acknowledge that we are sinners and need God’s grace to make a firm purpose of amendment.
It’s the high-horse, smug, self-satisfied, sanctimonious, I’m-all-right-Jack, finger-pointers like YOU (YES, YOU) I meant when I quoted those maxims.
The BBC were too busy spending licence-fee payers money on ‘the big bad wolf’ called the Catholic Church (yah, boo, hiss!)… then it comes out that senior management at the BBC and other establishments KNEW about the abuse going on in their studios here and up and down the country but didn’t do anything about these case and/or they made sure you shut up about it to save their own skin, regardless of the personal cost to the person reporting it.
The Roman Catholic Church is now the safest place for young and vulnerable people. Dispute this at your peril! If you do, you are just blowing hot air just to be awkward – no change there, squire!
PS: You thought you got me there, didn’t you?

Jonathan West

Those maxims were not directed at the Catholic Church. Members of the Catholic Church

For a pagan you’re incredibly obsessed with the Catholic Church. And as for moralising, you could outdo the whole lot of ultramontane popes.

Jonathan West

No, for a pagan I’m incredibly concerned with the welfare of children. I make no distinction between children based on the religion of their parents, all are equally deserving of protection.

If I thought that the children of Catholic parents were somehow less deserving of protection from abusers than other children, or if i were as anti-Catholic as I suspect you imagine me to be, then I wouldn’t speak out about the Catholic abuse crisis at all. i would leave you all very well along and hope that as many Catholic children as possible were abused, almost certainly losing their faith in the process.

But I don’t. My efforts to help protect children have included a four-year campaign (eventually successful) to get St Benedict’s School Ealing to adopt an effective child protection policy. You may recall that abuse went unchecked at that school for 60 years. I took a particular interest in that school because my son attended there for a time. I also achieved a similar result (in less time) with St Augustine’s Priory School (which my daughter attended for a time).

But I don’t only make life difficult for parts of the Catholic Church. I have contributed to the Dame Janet Smith inquiry into abuse at the BBC, pointing out how completely useless the BBC’s published child protection policy was. Although the enquiry has not yet reported, I notice that the BBC has completely rewritten the policy and it is much improved.

I have made life difficult for Coventry City Council in the wake of the death of Daniel Pelka, by conducting a survey of the safeguarding policies of schools in Coventry, and demonstrating how inadequate many of them were. As it happens, one of the two best school policies in Coventry belonged to St Thomas Moore Catholic Primary School, and I have no hesitation in congratulating the school and its headteacher on this.

I also support the @MandateNow campaign, calling for there to be a statutory obligation on professionals who work with children to report child protection concerns to the authorities. At the moment, in Britain (except Northern Ireland) a headteacher can know for certain that a pupil has been raped on school premises by a member of staff, but has no legal obligation to report anything to anybody. In order to protect children and those who would want to report abuse, “mandatory reporting” is needed.

So, what have you done for child protection lately?

Atilla The Possum

Hmmmmmm….. Clutching at wet straws here, aren’t we?

Chico’s Cat Food

Replying to Jonathan West and Meena_B is like talking to a revolving door at breakneck speed.
People like them think that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ doesn’t apply to priests or religious at all.
They’re not satisfied that they have been seriously SHOWN UP by the facts about how BXVI dealt with the ‘filth’ in the church i.e. clerical sex abusers.
When I think back to the obscenities, lies, slander and downright abuse thrown at Pope Benedict XVI prior to his state visit to England and Scotland over the issue of dealing with clerical sex abuse – even with that laughable threat to arrest him!
They’ll never be satisfied.

James M

At the very least, the Church would be wise to avoid canonising JP2 for a while, just to give the scandals – & thus, their effect on how he should be thought of – time to be considered impartially & calmly; which is hardly possibly while the Church is still mired in them.
The old rule that no cause should even be opened until the reputed Saint had been dead 50 years, is a good one.

James M

Maybe an Inquisition is just what is needed. Not the lurid one that Hollywood finds so film-worthy; and not the historical one that practiced torture & used the death penalty – but a more humane version of the historical one. The lack of ecclesiastical prisons need not be a fatal objection – imprisonment in a monastery, in a cell set apart for delinquents and incorrigibles, might be the, or a, solution.
Politically, the revival of an Inquisition might require concordats, to allow the Church the legal standing to punish her evil-doers in way that would not lead to collisions with civil law.

Inquisition in the Church’s usage means what the word appears to mean – enquiry. Neither the word, nor the historical reality, have any necessary association with the grimmer aspects of the Inquisition as it actually evolved – any more than bishops are necessarily or by definition associated with executing heretics. That their activities came to include the pronouncing sentence of death upon heretics, is an historical development that has no essential connection with the episcopate. The Church is defined by what necessarily belongs to its essence – not by its police actions.
So having an Inquisition is AFAICS not contrary to the Church’s mission, or spirit, or anything of that nature. The Church is nothing without charity – so any Inquisition would have to be conditioned by that, just as everything should be in the Church.

Julian Lord

So in other words you’re just going to completely ignore the facts of the matter, and stick with your own prejudice ?

Julian Lord

You obviously never heard of the phrase “age of consent”

You destroy your own original point in your frenzy to “correct” me — and thus prove my own point for me ; no, child abuse has NOT been considered as a crime “since time immemorial”, “in just about every jurisdiction”.

James M

But one that has the ring of truth about it. Unlike the tosh that is the “Jesuit Secret Oath”, this one contains nothing contrary to the Church’s teaching. It’s secretive – but not heretical.

The PDF it leads to refers for some reason to “Sixtus the First”: which from the context is historically impossible. But the rest of the text of what claims to be a promise by new cardinals raises no problems at all, except for Protestants. Cardinals have to promise to defend & vindicate, if need be by shedding their own blood, the rights of the Church: what is the problem with that ? The English text could be a blunder for “Sixtus the Fifth” – so unless there is some other, stronger, reason to suspect that the text is a Protestant fiction, my guess is that it is a genuine promise to be taken by cardinals. It is forcefully expressed, but no more so than many Roman documents having to do with discipline, the rights of the Church, & the like.

Dave

Nevertheless there must be some confusion somewhere since the facts do not add up, not to mention it is peculiar that no one else has ever noticed such secret vows as Sipe allegedly witnessed. The Tablet letter does not mention Magee nor the any vows taken at installation but only alleges that 31 cardinals took such a vow.

Jonathan West

Speak for yourself

Dave

If we alter the text to read Sixtus V, that could plausibly be an oath some Cardinals took, though there has to be better sources for it than a 100-year-old Times dispatch which one finds mistakes in even a cursory reading. Oaths are interesting things. I am a citizen of two commonwealth countries and have had to swear my ‘true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Her Heirs and Successors’. I have a cousin who also possesses now American citizenship who has thus also sworn ‘abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince’ without anyone ever noticing a contradiction. Possibly the ceremony for the installation of Cardinals uses language more acceptable for a Renaissance court than for modern thinking, but I cannot see how much importance is attached to that. Cardinals for example do promise that they are willing to shed their own blood but they do not often put themselves in a position to do so: aside from St John Fisher how many cardinal martyrs are there? But even with that oath I do not see anything which would justify criminal actions to prevent scandal, or Sipe’s alleged claim that 31 cardinals at an installation under Bishop Magee vowed to do just such. Which is not to say that bishops or cardinals have not acted in a immoral and criminal way to protect child abusers in the interests of preventing scandal, but in my mind that does not justify any and every claim of a larger conspiracy which is alleged, especially as in the case of this particular claim, the facts do not add up.

Guest

Removing a bishop from his apostolic charge is not as easy as you seem to imagine – in fact the due process to release a priest from his ordination as a father in the gospel is not a simple one either.

Nonetheless, I agree with you J W, the readiness of the awesome Benedict XVI to seek the resignation of woeful bishops – or their loss of pastoral authority under papal approval – was a greater sign of disapproval; Francis, like JP II et al, seems a little less disciplinarian.

Maladroit handing of serious wrongs in many professional bodies tends to be a matter of internal disapproval, a learning experience not a ‘dismissible offence'; still, something stronger than another ‘transfer’ is required in cases of adding insult to injury on the abused .. even if such insult is not a criminal offence only an adjunct to it (failing to follow procedures).

God Bless Our Pope, and help him.

Guglielmo Marinaro

Yes, first attempts were made to stuff us with the story that the phenomenon was more or less confined to America, then that it was more or less confined to America, Ireland and the UK, then that it was more or less confined to English-speaking countries, then that it was more or less confined to Northern Europe…and so it goes on. Eventually, no doubt, we’ll be told that it is more or less confined to this planet.

$74497298

Have you EVER considered —————–? No, of course not; sorry.

Andrew

I agree. After all, this was the Pope who beatified the croation cardinal who was tried for war crimes in the 40’s and implicitly involved in the murder and ethnic cleansing of thousands. Paradoxically, he was the Pope who criticised, silenced and sacked the priests and bishops who led the movement for peace and justice in countries led by despots, yet meddled in the political lives of Poland and Eastern block countries, and cosied himself with the re-constructed Croatia. having served in that theatre of war with the UN and later NATO in the 90’s, this double standard makes me sick.